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Why is my bath water blue ?

Our water supply is fluoridated (Victoria, Australia).  Bath has not been in use for a long time as we prefer showers.  Gas hot water recently changed over, but don't think that would have made any difference, and ran the bath with cold water after and that was also blue tinged.  Our water tastes just fine though.  Believe we have a mix of copper and pvc pipes. 

Update:

That was natural light coming through a window to the right of bath.  The bathroom is cream / white.  I don't think it was light refraction doing it.  I rang South East Water today and they suggested it could be corrosion from old copper pipes.  

Update 2:

I don't know what metal the plug hole pipe is but it has a white rubber stopper in it when photo was taken.  Late morning natural light through window, actually mostly blue skies for a change (Wet early Autumn here).  No artificial lighting turned on.  Apart from bathroom, all our other sinks are stainless steel.  I have never seen this blue bath water phenomenon before.  I held up a glass of water today and could see no blue tinge, but running a bath the water is still blue tinged.  Weird.

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6 Answers

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  • 2 weeks ago
    Favorite Answer

    Many of our white porcelain fixtures were stained blue from copper leaching from the pipes due to acidic water. A pH treatment system was installed and the problem disappeared.

  • 2 weeks ago

    I friend had an old bathtub. The stopper was metal, but rather corroded. No one made those anymore.

    So, they took it to a shop that plates metal.

    They paid to have it cleaned and electroplated.

    It is illegal to do that here in the states if you want chrome for some reason so they had to nickel plate it.

    They installed their shiny new looking stopper and filled the tub.

    Water had a clear blue tint because of the nickel reflecting blue light in the water.

    If your water is actually some kind of color (put some in a clear glass and look), you have a problem.

    You may have to call a plumber to investigate and repair what is wrong.

  • 2 weeks ago

    Copper makes things blue. Do not drink the bath water. 

    Source(s): school chemistry
  • 2 weeks ago

    I'll go with the light refraction theory and also suggest you dip a glass into the water and then hold it up in a different light to see if it really retains a blue-ish tint- 

    could just be an optical illusion based on colors in your bathroom. 

  • Anonymous
    2 weeks ago

    That is merely a optical illusion NOT caused by copper pipes etc.

    Dip a clear glass into the tub then hold it up to sunlight and you will see it's perfectly clear.

    The water is merely filtering certain frequencies of light and is more noticeable the larger the deeper the water.

    You can see the shallow end looks nearly clear.

    I can tell but the harsh lighting you are using no less than 5000K LED bulbs.

    And using high temperature LED bulbs makes it worse since they produce alot more blue light spectrum.

  • 2 weeks ago

    It's from the copper. 

    Tends to be worse if your water is acidic in nature. 

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